Of Trust and Social Obligations

My reading this morning, about the use of deception, the concept of trust, and the ethical implications of lying suggests that lying is not inherently immoral. Whether lying, bluffing, cheating, or whatever banner the deception is flying (see also: false flag operations), question-ability comes from what’s been promised.

Going back to a post from earlier this month, “Honor, Justice, and Rendition,” there seems a clear delineation between individuals and societies. People or groups of people using an honor system are only honest with others perceived as honorable. The more honorable an individual or group, the more honor there is to be had.

What could be understood then, is a couple of “truthiness” meters, honor and trust. One could be used to measure how often the character makes and then keeps or breaks promises with other honorable characters, since it’s relative. The other meter can be used to track how often the character lies in town, since it’s more objective.

Now, both bars would be completely objective from the point of view of the game’s engine. The engine knows what’s true and what’s false, based on true/false flags assigned to pieces of information. It’s time to revisit the idea “information” as an abstract resource, since Deception can be used to manipulate its value.

Let’s say your character uses a Skill to gather information. How this is done varies from Skill to Skill — whereas a Creation hero might combine pieces of information to create something of value, a Deception hero might exaggerate its value, or proceed to sell false information outright. What the information is, is singularly irrelevant.